Where the Soul Stones Sing
by HeronS
Summary: The ancient force dome of Shih Hanya has guarded its dead and their secrets for millennia, but now… something is getting out. Invited by Spock to spend shore leave in the pre-reformation shrine, Kirk, McCoy, Uhura, Chapel & Sulu get unwittingly cast in a millennia old Vulcan tragedy. Will history repeat itself? A Vulcan ghost story, and a celebration and warning of friendship.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1.**

Five thousand three hundred and nine years ago, the inhabitants of the citadel of Shih Hanya were all killed by a radioactive shrapnel bomb. Small pieces of sharp durasteel tore through stone and flesh and lodged themselves in bones and metal. The Vulcans of clan Hanya fell where they stood, where they sat, where they made love. The defenders on the battlements fell, eyes still looking out over the desert sky for an enemy that had never come. The cooks in the high towers fell, dead before they hit the giant vats of stew. And the lord of the citadel himself died sitting on his throne, his grasp on the armrests as tight in death as it had been in life.

And there they lie still, perfectly preserved. The containment force dome that sprang up saved the immediate lives of the denizens of the cliff dwellings surrounding the citadel, though many of them died young as well, from cancer and grief.

It was the end of the last of the vendettas in the Green War, because when the archenemy of the Hanya, lord Yari, was told the details of the attack, he broke his ancestral sword in two, and used the ragged end of the hilt to spill his blood over his own war table. And his heir rode for two nights to throw herself at Surak's feet, as he threadbare disciple of peace and logic was teaching on the outskirts of the forge, and begged him to save Vulcans from themselves.

That ride, and Surak's famous response, is well-known even among outworlders who are rarely told more than the absolute minimum about the shameful, violent, passionate pre-reformation times. But this story is about the prologue to that ride - and the final epilogue, many thousands of years later.

ooo0000ooo

"What do you mean, no air-conditioning?" Bones demanded.

"Precisely that, Doctor," Spock responded, eyes on the approach vector. The red, cracked stone landscape beneath them reached all the way to the curved horizons.

"That's absurd! There are people, living breathing Vulcans, living in the whatchacallit mansion right now. And I know for a fact that even your father has air conditioning in his city offices."

"My father often entertains alien visitors. But yes, many Vulcans use climate control devices to regulate the temperature of their homes. The mansion does not."

"You can't seriously mean…!" the doctor exploded, but Jim waved a placating hand from his seat behind the nav board.

"He's pulling your leg, Doctor. No air-conditioning, yes, but the ancient Vulcans built the mansion into the cliff wall itself, leading the wind to naturally flow through the rooms. You'll be cool as a… plomeek."

"Indeed," Spock confirmed. "A most apt analogy, Jim, since plomeeks and shuryas grow in the hanging gardens off the cliff face."

"I've been reading up," Jim confirmed with a grin. "It pays to be prepared when it comes to Vulcan."

Bones saw the minute stiffening of Spock's shoulders, and then the way they were deliberately relaxed a few seconds later. Good. He'd almost have been worried if he'd seen no such signs.

"Bah," he groused, voice deliberately petulant. "What about food stasis?"

"Certainly. The mansion is theoretically equipped to handle more than a thousand visitors at a time, caring for both their food and lodging."

Jim glanced up at this, "A thousand? That I didn't see in the data banks." He smiled. "And here Uhura was wondering if we weren't inconveniencing you, bringing down the senior officers of the alpha bridge crew. We could have brought down the entire crew of the Enterprise, and had plenty of room to spare."

"It is no inconvenience." Spock hesitated. "I would certainly have offered, but it would not have been politic at the moment, bringing down the entire crew of a battle-ready starship to a clan holding. While my father might have resigned himself to my association with Starfleet, I would not wish to cause him difficulty in the senate."

"I was joking, Spock." Jim responded, "And I have to say, it'll be good just to have the bridge crew down there. Family, you know."

"What do you mean, 'theoretically'," said Bones, who had been focusing on the important parts of the conversation, "'Theoretically equipped to handle visitors.'" He grabbed at his seat and cursed as Jim took an unnecessarily sharp turn before setting the shuttle down on red sandstone.

"Most of the environmental systems are over five thousand years old, Doctor," Spock replied coolly. The sudden spin didn't seem to have faced him in the slightest, and he rose the second the craft had stabilized. "It is unclear how much of them have survived, after all this time, should the entire complex be activated. We will be mostly alone here, and will not tax the systems. You need not be alarmed."

Once they had landed, Spock excused himself to alert their host to their presence, and walked straight into the cliff. It obediently rippled around him for a second, before the camouflage reasserted itself.

The other shuttle, bringing Uhura, Sulu and Chapel arrived only a few minutes later. It touched down in a much smoother curve that the Galileo.

"He's good," Jim remarked from where he was lounging by the rock wall, enjoying the last rays of the sun and breathing in the spicy air of the evening wind.

"That's Uhura piloting, not Sulu," Bones said. "She's good, yeah. But more to the point, you're rusty."

Jim made a face. "I never have time to fly anything anymore," he complained. "Maybe that's what I'll do this week. See if there are any ancient Vulcan flyers down there, forgotten deep beneath the stone." He gave the doctor a grin. "What's this? No outrage?"

Bones snorted. "As if Spock would ever let you go up in something that wasn't checked ten ways to Sunday." He took a deep breath. "But maybe I'm getting rusty with my Spockology. I'm honestly surprised that he's ok with letting you near this planet."

After what happened last time, when he killed you during the plak tow. Bones didn't say it of course. It was pretty clear that they weren't supposed to ever talk about it. It was enough to drive a man to drink and a reluctant ship's psychologist to pour over a particular psych profile for hours on end.

Jim shook his head.

"Not just ok, Bones. He asked us here, remember." He pushed off from the stone wall. "And you're not getting rusty. You're just focusing on the wrong part of that whole sorry mess."

And with that parting shot, the insufferable captain of the Enterprise sauntered off towards the others.

"This place his huge, Captain," Uhura said. She was using the edge of her sandwalker hood to shield her eyes as she looked up the cliff face above them. The shuttle pad had been cut into the mountain, the only perfectly horizontal area among the vertical, sloping lines. "I took us around to the east, and there are windows there as well, if you look carefully enough."

"The citadel on the top must have held hundreds of people as well," Sulu confirmed, eyes roaming the high cliffs around them. It made Kirk smile, relieved to be seeing a glimpse of the curious young lieutenant he'd come to respect so much the last few years. The last mission had been brutal, and Sulu had suffered more than most. "The sensors aren't working up there, of course, but just from the sheer size of it…"

"It's a shame we can't go inside the dome up there," Uhura nodded to the glinting spires far above, fingers tapping unconsciously at the useless tricorder at her side.

"It must still be radioactive," Sulu guessed. "Did, ah, did Mr. Spock say anything about that, Captain?"

Jim shook his head, as always energized by the enthusiasm of the younger officers. "Mr. Spock is being uncommonly forthcoming about Vulcan matters as it is, Sulu. Let's try not to pressure him too much and jinx it. What do you say, Uhura?"

"Hmm? Oh, yes, Sir. Of course… Now what is that?"

"That's Mr. Spock and the mansion's Guardian, A'ara," Nurse Chapel said quietly from her side, as the stone seemed to shimmer and disappear, leaving two Vulcan silhouettes waiting patiently at the mouth of a corridor inside.

Bones glanced at her as the others set off towards the opening. His head nurse had been unusually quiet ever since Spock extended the invitation to them all to accompany him here during the Enterprise's orbital repairs in Vulcan Space Dock 1.

"The captain's not the only one's who's been reading up on this place, I see," he said as he fell into step beside her.

Chapel adjusted her large duffel bag and kept looking straight ahead. "It always pays to be prepared, Leonard." Her gaze was caught by the sun's last ray's hitting the pearlescent domes of the Shih Hanyah towers, protected from the elements in their impenetrable force dome many hundreds of meters above them.

It didn't happen exactly then. Maybe because, as the Vulcan Science Academy will tell you, there are no such things as omens. But three minutes and two seconds after Spock ch'Sarek of the House of Surak had welcomed the last of his guests into the mansion beneath the doomed Shih Hanyah, the main tower split in two and fell down with a crack that reverberated among the abandoned canyons. It was most likely due to the inevitable effects of physics of erosion and minute gravitational shifts during the last few thousand years.

Most likely.

ooo0000ooo

When Ranek opened his eyes, there were another fourteen pages covered with writing in front of him.  
"No," he whispered to himself, "No, no, no." He closed his eyes and summoned all the Vulcan discipline his forty two years could offer, but even so was only able to just keep the panic at bay. "No, no, no, no."

The ancient writing reed broke under his trembling fingers and he threw it at the wall. The action shocked him enough to bring back some semblance of order to his mind.

Deep breaths.  
Centering.  
Discipline.

When he surfaced from the light meditative trance, the message icon on his terminal was blinking. Feeling as if he'd just broken the surface from an overlong underwater swim, he read A'ara's request for him to help her with a welcoming ceremony for visitors. Off worlders. For a split second, Ranek felt a murderous feeling of absolute contempt and he shut his eyes and willed it away. Far away.

By the time he had manage to wrest his emotions under control and felt alone in his skull again, he realized that he was far too late to help the Guardian.

* * *

 **Author's note: This story has been in the back of my mind for a while - but it was actualized by something that WeirdLittleStories wrote. I won't say more, but the soul stones of the title will become more and more important as the story goes on.**

 **It'll be fun to write a friendship centered adventure story. What do you think of it so far?**


	2. Chapter 2

"Well, ma'am," Bones said with a polite nod, "As welcoming ceremonies go, that was one of the more pleasant ones." He put down the wet cloth next to the others to the right of the small basin.

"I infer that you have experienced many welcoming ceremonies on many planets, Doctor," A'ara replied. Her voice was cool and pleasant, much as the cloths they had wiped their hands and faces on. She covered the copper colored basin with another white cloth before matter-of-factly whisking it away to a niche in the wall.

The whole ceremony had been much like that - matter of fact. It had had some mystic elements, like drawing a symbol on their faces, but carried out with the detached rationality they had all come to expect from Vulcans. To Spock, this was clearly not strange, and the others had followed his lead.

"More than I can count, yes." Next to him, Uhura coughed, and he quickly added. "Ah… That's a figure of speech, Guardian. So many that my, well, human memory would require a great deal of effort for me to be able to count them."

"Usually, though," Uhura said pleasantly, carefully not smiling, "it is not so difficult to classify the ceremonies as either secular or theistic. I confess that I am uncertain now. Is it impolite to ask about this?"

"No," A'ara said and then shook her head in an exaggerated fashion. She wasn't used to humans, but was making an effort to emulate their body language, Bones surmised. "I will tell you more about this place as we lead you to your accommodations."

She caught Spock's eye and he gave a short bow and proceeded into a narrow corridor leading deeper into the cliff. The others filed in behind him, with A'ara bringing up the rear.

"This mansion is an important cultural heritage site, under the care of the Municipality of Shih Hanya, specifically the Board of Education and Legacy Maintenance." The old Vulcan said. "It is also a shrine to those who perished in the Citadel above us, and is as such the spiritual responsibility of Spock's House. At the time of their death, belief in the old Vulcan gods was still prevalent in this part of the planet. In the centuries and millennia after the reformation, that belief changed until finally becoming the modern Vulcan reverent atheism."

"So you perform the old rituals out of respect, even if you do not believe in them?" Uhura asked glancing back over her shoulder, and A'ara responded in the affirmative.

"Belief has always been less important than ritual observance in Vulcan religions, in contrast with their Terran equivalents," Spock observed. They were walking single file, stone all around them, the ceiling only a scant decimeter over their heads. "But oaths and promises have always been culturally more important than in the current major Terran cultural hegemonies."

"So, at some point someone made an oath to keep the rituals over the dead going here forever," Kirk mused. "And modern Vulcans still feel bound by that oath, even though the old gods have no genuine followers."

"Indeed," A'ara noted, "That is most insightful, Captain Kirk. That sense of obligation to the legacy of our history is tempered by pragmatism, however. Yet since the site must be preserved for educational and research purposes, it is not difficult to also fulfil the old promises. Please open the door to your right, Spock," she added.

Spock did and a moment later they left the narrow corridors for a large hall. They were deep inside the cliff and there were no windows, but still Bones felt a weight he had not known he was carrying fall away as he stretched and just luxuriated in the space around him. He saw similar signs in the other humans - some degree claustrophobia was a minor but ever present problem for most of his species.

"And that's why Spock is here, yes?" Bones said as his eyes roamed the room. It was sparsely decorated with a long table set up with computer terminals and small raised 3D viewers similar to the one that Spock preferred on the Enterprise. The casual modern technology of the room's center was in sharp contrast to the small clay oil lamps that burned in niches all around the room. Each niche had an inscription in Old Vulcan above its lamp, etched deep into the very rock.

Bones turned back to A'ara to find her studying him. "Indeed. That, too, is most insightful. Or well informed. Usually particulars of these matters are not discussed with people outside one's clan?" She raised an eyebrow and fixed her gaze on Spock.

"Spock has said very little, Guardian," Jim said quickly, already intent on defending his Science Officer. "Only that he had some issues to attend to here, and whether we would like to accompany him to explore the region as part of our shore leave. And we know enough about Vulcan culture not to ask. But we are only human - and it's impossible for us not to infer and guess. And I do believe curiosity is a weakness we share with Vulcans." Like Uhura, Jim knew enough not to smile, but that cross-species charm gene of his was working overtime, Bones noted. Jim was as protective of Spock as the Vulcan was of him, after all.

"I have not discussed the nature of Shih Hanya," Spock affirmed, but then paused for a second. "However, had I done so, it would not have been inappropriate. These... are my friends, Guardian."

"Friends." The Guardian tasted the word. "Friends... And Starfleet warriors, just arrived from the killing fields, blood still on their hands, as the old poems would say."

At her words, Sulu, who had been looking relaxed and curious, froze.

A'ara continued. "Two notions controversial enough each on their own to many Vulcans, certainly controversial to almost anyone when combined. And yet a very appropriate one here, in this place, as the Time of Remembrance approaches."

"Indeed. That was my thought as well."

"Very well." She turned suddenly to Bones. "For reasons that Spock will no doubt explain to you, Doctor, there are few staff in attendance in the mansion at the moment. However, we do have a resident archaeologist-anthropologist who elected to remain, Dr. Ranek. When his duties permit, I shall encourage him to seek you out, should you have any further questions about the past and present practices, religious and secular, of this place."

"Ah. Yes. Thank you." Bones managed.

A'ara inclined her head, and left, leaving a silence behind her. Jim clasped Spock's shoulder, all unconcerned affection, and then grabbed a chair and sat down. The others remained standing, eyes on the Vulcan.

"Friends, well… Good," Bones finally said. "About time you admitted that, so that's good for you. But the only blood on my hands was from trying to save Burkenski and then that blasted Klingon. I'm no warrior. What exactly have you volunteered us for here, Spock?"

"To many Vulcans, every Starfleet officer, from captain to yeoman, is a warrior." Jim interjected. "A killer who has made the conscious choice to aid in taking the lives of other sentient creatures."

"I accept that," Sulu said suddenly, harsh and loud, and then, as if surprised at his own tone, he tried for a smile. It was not very convincing. "We are what we are. And I'm honored to fight by your side, Mr. Spock, and to be called your friend, even if, well, especially if, it's somehow controversial…"

"As am I," Uhura said, following it up with a phrase in Vulcan. "And if you need us for anything, Spock, of course we'll do it," She added with a look at the doctor, who waved his hands in exasperation.

"Well of course we'll do it, whatever it is, that's a given. I just want to know! I don't think it is too much to ask."

"It is not too much to ask, Doctor," Spock said, having mostly observed his human… friends' reactions for a while. "And you are not under any obligation. But the ceremonies that should be performed in this particular place during the Time of Remembrance were devised, in times long gone by,for warriors, for a _katen_."

"A hunting or fighting party of sworn warriors," Jim murmured in translation. "A chosen family, where social standing or House or Clan didn't matter."

"Indeed. It is not usually possible of course, in modern times, for the remembrance rituals to those who fell in the Green Wars to be done by warriors. In fact Vulcans find it ideologically difficult to reconcile a reverence for our ancestors while not accepting their violent actions. That is why many of the research staff here prefer to leave Shih Hanya during these few nights - many also travel home, to do their own House-specific rituals. My parents took up the duty for many years, but now that I am in residence during the appropriate time, I suggested that I would come in their stead. The rites themselves are simple: candles should be lit and the seals of the dome, both telepathic and physical, are verified and strengthened. The instructions are also very specific about a required prayer. The entire duration is approximately thirty three minutes."

"So we could do it ourselves, then, just you and me," Jim nodded."Sounds easy enough."

"I would be honored to take part," Uhura said, "But what is in the prayer?"

" _Forgive me, All, as I take life to preserve life_ ," Spock recited, and, as one, all the oil lamps in the wall niches flickered and almost went out. A deep, prolonged hiss filled the room.

The humans gasped and moved toward the captain on pure instinct, but Spock held out a hand.

"That is the climate control system, coming online at exactly 2500 hours. Please do not be alarmed."

"Alarmed? Who's alarmed?" Bones spat, still looking a bit wild around the eyes.

Uhura took a deep breath and clasped her hands in the small of her back. Dismissing the strange occurrence as a fluke, she considered Spock's words again.

" _Forgive me, All, as I take life to preserve life_. I see how that would be hard to square with Surak's ideal that it is better to die yourself than take a life," Uhura mused. "I get how it might be difficult to get modern Vulcans to participate in such a ritual." She squared her shoulders. "If you'll have me, I would very much like to participate, and I have no problems saying such a prayer."

Uhura glanced over at Chapel who looked up at Spock and then inclined her head. It was an understated gesture, calm and almost regal.

"Bones?" Jim asked.

"Damned Vulcan rituals on creepy graveyards…"

"You are in no way obligated to take part, Doctor," Spock said softly. "And I apologize if I have inadvertently created a situation where you feel socially…"

"What? Don't be daft, of course I'm obligated to take part, you idiot. We're friends, you said so yourself in front of the, ah, Guardian. Can't back out now."

Jim smiled in the face of this mix of frustration and affection, so very typical of their doctor, but when he turned to the helmsman his smile died.

"Sulu?" He asked, getting up.

Sulu had crossed his arms in front of him and was looking down into the carpet. His fists were clenched. Jim had to repeat his name before he looked up. For a moment his eyes flashed anger and then he looked confused.

"Sulu, are you alright?" Uhura asked, approaching him from the other side. Sulu held up a hand, palm towards her and she stopped.

"I… Yeah. Sorry. Yes. I'm not sure I can take part in the ceremony, Mr. Spock. Spock. My... friend. I'm honored as well, I just… Not right now. I am truly sorry."

"Of course," Spock said. "It negates nothing, Hikaru."

The Japanese man smiled thinly. There was an awkward silence and then he rubbed his forehead. "I actually think it would be a good idea for me to have an early night. Were there sleeping quarters…"

"Indeed," Spock said, relieved to have an excuse to move on from the emotionally charged topic, "I will show you how to open the doors."

The two of them, with Uhura and Chapel in tow, went to a discrete control panel, and soon hidden doors were whisking open in the left wall, revealing what looked like torpedo casings, or maybe coffins. They slid out on rails, and each functioned as a sleeping platform that could be closed off to outside sound. The upper half of each platform was as transparent or opaque as the inhabitant wished it. The design was ancient, and the four of them were soon pouring over it discussing the wiring. Spock had his own ways of distracting junior officers from brooding, Bones reflected as he went over to Jim who had fired up one of the terminals on the long table.

"Is that thing also a few millennia old?"

"Well, the casing is." Jim responded. "The computer core seems to be modern duotronic circuitry though - the historical and archaeological databases are very impressive." Jim used hand gestures to sift through the data streams. "And they do have hangars filled with ancient flitters, and possibly even weapon stores… But they were all collapsed a few hundred years after the reformation - the old Vulcans brought that entire side of the mountain down, when a particularly Surakian administration was intent on burying their history. Too bad the residual radiation is interfering with sensors, it would have been interesting to see if any crafts survived somewhere deep inside the mountain…."

Jim looked up at Bones and noted the direction of the doctor's gaze. "Sulu will be fine, Bones. He just needs a few days to process everything. He killed that Klingon with his bare hands, it's supposed to shake him up."

"Yeah." The doctor sighed. "Yes. His 'Fleet training will come through, I'm not worried about that. Yet. Just hard to see him. Them. Any of you. Go through this. This Vulcan remembrance ritual would probably be good for him," Bones added.

Jim nodded and closed down the terminal. Like Bones, he wished that there was more that he could do for the younger man, but getting involved right now would only be self-serving. It might make him feel better, but wouldn't help Sulu.

This was something each Starfleet officer, each warrior who had stared down at blood-covered hands, had to deal with in their own way.

Sulu padded softly through the red Vulcan stone, a towel over his shoulder. There were baths somewhere on this level, but all the corridors looked the same, and now he was checking each and every room. He was tired, but he really needed a bath.

It was nice, to be on his own. There wasn't a lot of that on a starship, even though being a lieutenant meant that he had his own quarters. There were always people, everywhere - in the rec room, on the bridge… In his quarters - caring friends and good shipmates, who had come to his cabin in neverending streams these last few days since he'd strangled a nameless klingon boarder with his bare hands.

He remembered his right forearm, around the other's throat, as his left locked the hold from behind the Klingon's head.

He remembered pressing, pressing, pressing. He remembered the satisfaction shooting through him, he remembered the face of all his dead. He had shouted his joy to their memory - witness this. Witness how you are avenged, beloved. Witness this green blood, spilled in your name.

"Witness," he murmured now as he strode through the corridors towards his bed chamber. He walked taller now. There would be many witnesses...

"My lord," Tean interrupted him, coming out of a store room. For a minute, he was caught up in his memories, and Tean's form blurred strangely in front of him.

"Tean," he acknowleged shortly. "What news?"

"Everything is proceeding according to plan, my lord," Tean said, and such a statement should rightly not have been accompanied by nervous twitching of his hands. The Lord of the Hanya narrowed his eyes in a command, and the advisor replied, "It's only that we cannot find… we cannot find your daughter, my lord."

Rage, that old friend, filled him and he reached out to grab Tean by the neck…

And then Sulu was stumbling backwards, gasping.

Where was he? Still the same corridor? For a moment there he was sure he'd blacked out, like the microsleeps that plagued you after a three day battle shift. An unknown Vulcan stood before him, breathing hard. Where had he come from?

"Ah… Are you lost, human?" the Vulcan said, and then took a breath and drew himself up. "I am Dr. Ranek of Shih Gen. I apologize for not having had the time to introduce myself earlier."

"I…" Sulu cleared his throat. "I'm Hikaru Sulu, of the Enterprise. Yes. I am lost. I was looking for the baths?" He breathed out, his Starfleet training reasserted himself. "Truth be told, I think I need to seek out our physician - I just lost track of where I was for… a little while."

Ranek shook his head forcefully - like with A'ara, it seemed to be a recently acquired gesture that he had not had much chance to practice. "That is not necessary. The air here has some peculiar characteristics - small pockets of carbomonoxide - that causes the phenomenon. It is not dangerous. The baths are through here."

"Alright." Sulu rubbed his neck. He felt tense. "Well, thank you for telling me, Dr. Ranek. In that case I'll focus on that bath first. Where was it?"

Ranek directed the human onwards into the maze of tunnels, carefully hiding his racing heart.

This had never happened together with someone else before. He wished, oh how he wished, that he could have remembered what had been said between them.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

 _ **...In which we finally find out a (tiny) little more about soul stones, and Bones and Spock watch the sunrise.**_

"Doctor," Spock whispered, shaking him. "Doctor, wake up."

"Huh, what? Who? Where?" Bones was already groping for his medical kit, hand banging into the hard plastiglass of the sleeping capsules. He cursed.

"There is no medical emergency, Doctor. Please keep your voice down. The dawn is soon breaking. Would you like to watch it?"

"What? Oh. Yes. Sure."

A few minutes later, as he was hiking up too-steep steps, he wondered in bleary eyed consternation why he'd said that.

The acceptance had been instantaneous, and Bones knew there were few things he accepted instantaneously in his life. Traipsing around in an old Vulcan mausoleum to look at the sunrise… He glanced up at the spiral staircase at the Vulcan who was rapidly outdistancing him.

"Well, how much further is it?"

"It is right here, Doctor," Spock replied and stopped by a door on the side of the staircase.

"If they had flitters and force domes, those ancient Vulcans, why wouldn't they have installed some elevators or escalators like any decent…" His grumbling trailed off as he exited the mountain.

The sky was full of stars. The light pollution of the megacities was far away, and the absolute darkness was sprinkled with diamonds. He'd seen the night sky on a hundred alien worlds, but it never failed to fill him with absolute awe.

Here it was hard to judge where the sky ended and the horizon began. The valley stretching out before them was full with tiny pinpricks of light. He turned and saw that they covered the mountainside too, and as he looked upwards he saw them give an otherworldly shimmer to the force field surrounding the Keep just above them.

"What are they?" He breathed.

"Ani-eali." Spock responded quietly. He'd sunk down on his haunches in a relaxed position. "They occupy a similar biological niche to dragonflies on Earth, with the bioluminescence as the most obvious difference. They are swarming now, which creates the effect that you see."

"They're beautiful," Bones murmured. Spock inclined his head. After a few minutes of silence, the Vulcan spoke again.

"There are any number of pre-reformation myths associated with the ani-eali. The most persistent is that they are drawn to restless souls of the dead. Clearly a myth."

"Mmm," Bones said. "Superstition seems to be a pan-galactic phenomena."

"Indeed. Most regrettable. It is much more likely that they are drawn to the telepathic fluctuation of the soul stones buried somewhere within the ruins."

Bones blinked several times as he parsed this. His voice was slow. "So insects drawn to restless souls - superstition. Insects drawn to telepathic stones…. Science?"

"Yes."

"Huh." A part of him felt as if he should ask more, but then the tranquility of the scene seemed to seep into his bones. The universe was infinitely diverse. In infinite combinations. Right now, after the last few weeks of noise and mayhem, he needed have a chance to rest in the moment.

Over the next twenty something minutes, the sun rose. They were close to the equator which always made the process seem incredibly quick to the Georgia-raised doctor. The star-speckled world dissolved into color - gradients of reds and gold, but also hints of green and blue.

It became apparent that the cliff dominated the valley as the ancient Keep dominated the cliff. Far below, ancient caravan roads spiraled out from an oasis. The roads were marked with black onyx stones every few hundred meters? Distance markers, or maybe shrines? Or maybe energy stations for flitters to reinforce their antigravity shields? Or maybe all three of these things in combination: Vulcans both old and modern seemed to be enamoured with efficiency, after all.

Around the oasis far below, life was everywhere. Grass, bushes, trees. Fields. But the green areas abruptly cut off outside perfectly even circles and squares of greens. The edge between life and barrenness was sharp like a knife. Life and death, existing side by side.

"Irrigation?" Bones asked and Spock hummed affirmation.

Somehow the sound woke Bones from a waking dream. They hadn't talked for a long while, and time had seemed to stop. It had been eminently restful. The doctor suddenly felt a bit disorientated.

"Where's Jim?" He asked and couldn't for the life of him figure out why it came out sounding so harsh.

Spock raised an eyebrow at him but responded evenly as he went back to regarding the scene before them. "He wished to acquire some equipment. I assume he will he be here presently."

"Oh." Searching for a way to walk back his earlier tone, Bones continued, softly. "That's too bad. You must have wanted to show him this. The dragonflies, the sunrise."

Spock continued his still surveillance of the valley, neither head nor body moving. "Jim is always restless, the first morning of shore leave. I judged that this experience would be too still for him to enjoy. I thought it better suited to you."

Before Bones could respond, a clanging ruckus erupted from behind them. After a few seconds the rock camouflage shimmered and the starship captain in question appeared, walking backwards. He was dragging several large and heavy harnesses that at one time must have been placed in a case that had now fallen open. With a final wrench he got the harnesses over the threshold and turned around, radiating excitement.

"I finally found them - I'm sure the storage ordering system here follows an impeccable logic, but I sure don't get it. Oh, but this is a spectacular view, my friend," he continued, clapping Spock on the shoulder and looking out over the vista for a second or two, before taking a deep content breath and rubbing his hands together.

"Right! Who's ready to fly?" he asked with a grin, tilting his head at the harnesses.

"Wait, what?" Bones sputtered.

ooo000ooo

 **Author's note: This was originally the beginning of a monster 10 page chapter that I felt needed to be broken up somehow - and this was the only natural break, since a lot of things will be happening very quickly in the next chapter. So here you go!**


	4. Chapter 4

**===Chapter 4===**

 _ **...In which Uhura and Chapel take a peek at the mysterious great hall of the keep, and have several very startling conversations…**_

Uhura and Chapel dressed quietly in hiking gear. They left Sulu sleeping - he'd complained of a headache the night before and both women judged that some alone time might do him good. They packed some wraps and onigiri from the replicator and filled water skins with electrolyte reinforced water for a day hike - the nature in these mountains was supposed to be spectacular, and they planned to be gone until late afternoon. Spock had told him that the first ceremony of remembrance was to be performed at dusk, but there were many hours until then for a pair of energetic explorers to enjoy the terrain.

But first, of course, they had to stop and have a peek at the Keep on their way to the outside

"There are two viewing platforms that are easy to get to," Chapel noted, eyeing her pad. "One to the east, and one closer to us here to the north-west."

"When were they built?" Uhura asks.

"Some four thousand years ago. Once the bomb went off, the automatic force domes kept popping up all over the mountain, trying to contain the bioweapons and the radiation. They've been slowly disappearing over the millennia as the hazard level has dropped, and now it is mainly the central hall of the Keep that is still covered. The center of the explosion."

They came to staircase going up and Uhura took the lead. "When will the final bubble pop?"

"In about…" Chapel swiped at the padd. "Oh. One hundred twenty years or so." Her voice became quiet. "So Spock will be able to walk around there then, in his middle age."

Uhura said nothing, but threw a discerning glance back at Chapel.

"Well, here we are, junction, ah, 136-squigglysign-little hat." She remarked lightly, instead, making her friend laugh.

"Aren't you supposed to know Vulcan?"

"Three modern dialects, plus archaic temple speech, thank you very much. But this was a proper diversified planet back when the massacre here took place. Thousands of languages, hundreds of writing systems." She shrugged, "Give me half an hour with my databases and I'll be able to derive this script from the ones I know, but for now the hieroglyph gets to be squigglysign-little hat."

She pushed open the door.

They emerged from the corridors to a smell of the outside air. The mountain was heavily sloped here, but steps had been carved out, making it easier to walk the ten meters between them and the faintly shimmering force dome. The dome melted into the stone to the right and the left, but here there was a small area where an outsider could stand, looking in.

Beyond the force dome, the great hall of the Shih Hanya lay before them. The Hall had been the center of the explosion that brought down a once mighty House - and which, by and by, signaled the beginning of the end of the endless vendettas of Green War, and the start of the Time of Surak.

At some point there had been a roof above them, most likely in the puwi style - that meant great lengths of canvas artfully stretched in harmonious shapes that often made Terrans think of the restored Sydney Opera House. Rain, once it came, was a blessing and would not have been kept out of the hall, but the glaring sun would have necessitated some sort of shelter. As the radiation levels sank, the force dome had shrunk and the roof had ended up outside its protection. Normal processes of decay had set it, and now there were no signs left of the fabric, and several of the great stone beams had fallen.

Inside the force dome, time had stood absolutely still for the last four thousand three hundred and nine standard years. Uhura and Chapel had known this, had discussed it. But even so, the reality of the situation didn't hit them until they had the evidence right before their eyes.

""He looks like he's sleeping," Uhura murmured, eyes bound by a boy lying sprawled by a pillar just a few meters into the hall. A low open box, maybe a tray, lay upended near his right hand, and several small round pieces of… bread? had spilled out over the floor. His face was tucked into his armpit and hidden from the observers, but a single up-swept ear, adorned with several earrings, was clearly visible.

"An Oxford Archaeological party worked here for a few years some decades ago," Chapel said quietly. They were both speaking in the hushed voices that Uhura associated with her childhood mosque. "They named him "the Sleeper'."

"What do the Vulcan call him?"

"S-143-3."

"Oh."

Uhura wrenched her eyes away from the dead child, and took in the sheer number of bodies in the hall. Many were dressed in clothes similar to the sandwalker robes that Spock had given them in preparation for this visit. Their freshly fabricated robes had the minimalist practicality of modern Vulcan fashion, however, while the ancient Vulcans lying in front of them had their robes adorned with jewels and embroidery. Uhura saw several accoutrements gleaming in the rising morning sun and realized she wasn't sure what was merely decorative metal and crystal, and what were really part of wearable tech. Regardless of their fondness (at least among the nobility) for bladed ceremonial weapons and stone keeps, these were a people who had just achieved sustainable space flight after all. They had died as Surak was walking the land and streaming subversive video speeches to the worldwide com network, and only years before the great Romulan Exodus would started in the great generation ships…

It was easier to focus on the tech and the fashion, but there was a limit to how long she could distract herself. Uhura had decided at an early age to always treat her natural sensitivity as a strength - it gave her an empathetic understanding of others that almost closed in on telepathy. She believed it made her kind. And most importantly, it was just a part of who she was, and she'd be damned if she'd let it stand in her way of being a galactic explorer.

Admittedly, at times it was a bloody nuisance.

She bit back a sob as she finally focused on the twisted faces of the dead. Pain. So much pain. Blood spatters. Humanoids twisted into shapes their bodies were never supposed to have.

She felt Chapel's arm around her shoulder.

"I just need a minute," Uhura choked out, and felt the arm tighten. Had they been up on the ship, on duty, she would have repressed this. Carried on. But not here.

"I know," Chapel said simply.

The nurse was far from unaffected by the sight before them, but her natural reaction to pain was usually sympathetic, not empathetic. She didn't relive the pain of others, but was instead filled with a determination to help. There weren't a lot of places that determination could go at the moment, however.

In the center of the great hall there was a throne, on which the perfectly preserved body of the lord of the Shih Hanya was seated. From this direction, they only saw his broad shoulders. The throne was made for more than one person, but the bond mate of the lord was clearly not in residence. Uhura managed to put together an intelligible question about that through her tears and Chapel answered:

"All records from this era are fragmentary. The Green War wasn't only physical, but digital as well, and a lot of archives and cloud servers were simply wiped. I've read that the historians think she, the bond mate that is, had gone back to her own House before this, presumably after some falling out. There's also woman of her name listed as part of the Romulan exodus four years after this, but it's not clear if it's the same individual."

Chapel looked at the fallen Vulcans. So many. And yet, surprisingly few, only fifteen in this chamber, and they could only see about nine clearly. The others would be visible from the other viewing platform. But given the time of day and the importance of Shih Hanya there should have been many dozens of bureaucrats and servants here, she'd read, and that was the part of the mystery of this place. Why hadn't even more people died?

Another mystery that kept the historians and physicists busy was the very fact that the containment force dome had worked as well as it had. Once access to radiation bioweapons spread to warlords across the continents, there had been domes installed in several other strongholds. Several had been deployed after successful attacks, but many had failed either immediately or after a few decades, making entire regions uninhabitable up until modern day. It was enough to make some researchers speculate that someone had had a warning about the dirty bomb here in Shih Hanya. That someone had activated the containment fields in advance… But so much of this was speculation. The historians didn't even agree on how the bomb had entered the Keep.

Uhura was breathing more normal again. She gave the nurse a shaky smile. "You've really studied up on this place."

"Yes. Yes I have." Most of the texts she had read had come from Spock's family archives. Collecting them was one of many responsibilities that members of his House carried on their shoulders.

"Oh." Suddenly Uhura's attention made a welcome shift and her breath caught as she picked up on the undercurrents in her friend's words. "Oh."

Uhura searched for words. "Chris, if you ever want to talk about this, about you and Spock, you know I'm here, right." She snuck her arm around the other woman's waist. "And if you don't want to talk about it, I'm still here."

Chapel sighed. "I don't know what there is to talk about. I think… Nyota, I think he might be asking me to marry him." She sounded dejected.

Uhura's eyes widened. "Marry him? But, wait, Chris, as far as I know, the two of you haven't even…"

"We haven't. But that's not strange from a Vulcan perspective. None of this is strange from a Vulcan perspective, I bet."

Uhura studied her friend. "You love him," she stated. "You have for years."

Christine only shrugged. "Yes. And he doesn't love me, and I'm not sure that it isn't just racist of me to wish for that. Oh Uhura, it's all so… Damned complicated. It would be better if he and I could have a real conversation about this, but everything about marriage and, well, sex, is a jumbled mess of sacred and taboo for Modern Vulcans. We've been dancing around… something… for months now. I'm hoping maybe it will be different here, in this place."

Suddenly, from one moment to the next, her stance shifted. Her legs spread, her shoulders straightened. By her side, Uhura did the same, and she was now scanning their surroundings with the alertness of a worried soldier. Her eyes passed over the force dome and its bodies as if they weren't there, however. Her hands rested on her hip, right by an invisible laser pistol and ceremonial sword.

When the blonde woman spoke next, her voice was deeper, the pain in it far more pronounced.

"I don't know what to do with her. I don't know what our marriage bond even means, any more," Chapel-Vata said. "Sepul, I don't… I don't even know if she's coming back this time."

"Of course she is coming back, Lord Vata. She's your bond mate." Uhura-Sepul licked their lips. "My lord, again I ask forgiveness…"

"You're her bodyguard, Sepul, not her jailer." Chapel-Vata said. "This is her father's Keep. If she wants to disappear in the middle of a war, there's a limit to what we can do to stop her." Chapel/Vata ran a hand through their hair and continued in a low tone. "She's a damned scientist, what business does she have in the middle of a war zone?" They laughed darkly and immediately answered their own question. "Oh, but that's a stupid thing to ask, isn't it. I know exactly what business."

Beside them, Uhura-Sepul sighed. "Where I'm from, t'hyla aren't allowed outside the clan, my Lord. It seems to me a wise precaution." Their errant charge, the Lady Enieth, had disappeared two days ago. Most likely Enieth would even now be trying to get her t'hyla, the warrior Yen, youngest daughter to the Yari House, safe from the escalating warfare between the two houses. As safe as anyone could be, when orbital lasers were being deployed.

"How can you regulate t'hyla?" Chapel-Vata hissed. "My Enieth's bond to that Yari bitch is as strong as a chain. Even when she's surrounding me in bed, I can feel their bond in her mind!"

"Ah," the bodyguard shifted uncomfortably. "Well at least your bondmate's t'hyla isn't male," They tried to offer finally, but Chapel-Vata just scoffed.

"You and your southern sensibilities, Sepul. Why would I care who had fathered the child in my bond mate's womb, as long as I was the one to raise that child. No, it's not that. I don't care if Enieth and Yen intimate with each other, not that I think they are. No it's…" Chapel/Vata shook their head. "You hear all the songs about t'hyla pairs, their bonds shining like stars or whatnot, and how this is just a great addition to the love they have for their lovers and spouses and children and grandchildren and families. It's all a damned lie, Sepul. A thrice-damned lie. Once that t'hyla chain snaps tight between two souls, everyone else is discarded. Me. Her Father. The children we should be trying to have."

Uhura-Sepul decided to keep their silence. Vata always became like this when Enieth was away for too long, running around with Yen and her katen. When Enieth was in residence, Vata seemed to be content enough, and even tolerated Yen. The bodyguard tried to stay out of it.

That had been before the latest outbreak of hostilities, of course. Now Yen would definitely not be a welcome visitor in the Shih Hanya keep. Not while her Yari parents plotted the eradication of the entire Hanya House. Ay, but love and jealousy and bonds - be they bonds of marriage or t'hyla... it was a complicated business. Above Sepul's paygrade, certainly.

After four years as Enieth's body guard, Uhura-Sepul had yielded to the realities of the situation. Yen was as least as good a warrior as them, and even more invested in Enieth's safety. Yen's warrior friends in the katen were also dedicated. So usually when Enieth left with them to go out and do gods knew what, Uhura-Sepul wrestled down their pride and obeyed the orders to stay put and wait.

But now… with the war getting hotter every day, and Enieth somewhere out there, the gods only knew where…

Suddenly Uhura-Sepul felt their gaze and mind dragged like a compass needle to the east. There was Enieth - rising with a flying harness, like a glorious foari bird in the morning sun! The shock was great, and for a dizzying second, neither Uhura-Sepul nor Chapel-Vata were sure of what they were seeing. It was Enieth, definitely. They'd know her mind anywhere. But superimposed on the lithe, small body of the scientist was a larger image, a powerful male…

Chapel-Vata shook their head to clear it, and bellowed to their bondmate: "Come down here, this instance!"

The figure paused in mid-air, and then they both felt and saw a second person rise up behind it. Yen. Of course it was Yen. They must be trying to circumvent the Keep security to smuggle the Yari woman inside. Oh, but would Chapel-Vata have words for their errant spouse when she… he? No… she, yes, it had to be she... finally landed!

"Down!" Chapel-Vata bellowed again, and when the figures drifted over (were they protected from the eyes in the great hall by the roof? Was… was the roof even there? Uhura-Sepul felt a nauseating sense of vertigo...) and landed, Chapel-Vata strode over to Enieth and and reached up to shake her… (him?) by the arms. "You are mine!" They hissed.

The minute they touched, Chapel stumbled backwards with a small cry. Spock, brow furrowed, reached for her, but the nurse avoided his touch, and he let his arms fall.

"Ms. Chapel? What is wrong? Do you require assistance?" His gaze traveled to Uhura who had reached out for a rock wall to steady herself. "Lieutenant?"

Now Kirk was landing as well, eyes darting about, assessing the situation. "McCoy!" He bellowed over his shoulder. His eyes sought Uhura's. "Lieutenant? Nyota? What's going on? Why did you need us to come down?"

The communications specialist took a long shuddering breath. "I don't… I think I had one of those microsleeps that Sulu was talking about. I lost…" She squinted up at the sun, "I must have blacked out for at least a few minutes."

"Nurse?" Kirk asked, the order clear in his voice.

"Yes. I didn't come to until I… Well, I guess I sort of woke up when I touched you, Mr. Spock."

With a small yelp and much noise, Dr. McCoy landed behind them, and promptly fell on his ass. The anti-grav harnesses had looked natural on both the captain and first officer, but the older man was clutching at the fastenings in panic.

"Blasted thing!" He finally managed to wrench the harness off and took a little leap towards the others, only stopping when he saw that no one appeared to be injured.

"What are you hollering about, Jim?" He said angrily. "What's going on?"

"I'm not sure, Bones. But I think no more hiking for these ladies, right, Nurse, Lieutenant? They had an episode similar to what Sulu described yesterday, but longer in duration. Check them out, Doctor. Spock, analysis?"

"Insufficient data, Captain."

"Speculation then."

Spock clasped his hand behind his back. "I am not sure speculation at this stage would be wise, Sir."

Kirk's lips flattened but before he could say anything, Bones interrupted. "I agree with Spock, Jim." The doctor was running his tricorder over the two ladies and shook his head in puzzlement. "I can't find anything wrong with them at all at first blush, and it's no use you going all battle commander on us over what will probably amount to some sort of weird altitude sickness." He finished his scan and handed the tricorder over to Chapel, who looked through the results while massaging her temples.

"I don't like it, Bones."

"Jim, your ship was boarded a week ago. Factor out your own antsiness left over from that, and what are you left with?"

Kirk rested his hands on his hips and exhaled slowly. He traded a glance with Spock and then smiled a little tensely. "Alright, what do you recommend, Bones?"

"Shore leave." Bones said promptly. "And that's for all of you, whether you've had any weird symptoms or not. No buzzing around on crazy antigrav harnesses, Jim, or hiking in high summer heat, young lady," he said, wagging a finger at Uhura. "No, some good, solid sitting back on your butts and eating whatever passes for ice cream around here. And then a little walk up here again come dusk for Spock's ceremony. Sounds like just enough movement for a day, I think."

He smiled at Spock and Kirk, standing shoulder to shoulder. Kirk would be climbing the walls within half a day, and Spock would too, in his own understated way. Under normal conditions, the Vulcan could certainly have buried himself in research or music, but Bones knew - knew in a profound way - that Spock had looked forward to showing his home world to his best friend. Well… To all of them.

With any luck, the doctor would be able to release them all to their crazy antics tomorrow, but he wasn't going to tell them that, lest they started trying to negotiate already.

"Care to give a second opinion, Chris?" He asked and turned to his head nurse. The blonde had turned the scanner on the disquieting still-life on the other side of the force dome, and started a little at being addressed.

"I agree, Leonard." she said over her shoulder, still scanning. Bones was sure he didn't know why - the force dome threw all readings out of whack, you couldn't get a decent transporter lock here, and tricorders just spit out gibberish..

"Oh, there are a million fancy things that might be wrong with us," Chapel mused. "Maybe the Klingons had some alien disease with them. Maybe we all became allergic to Vulcan parsnips because of some stray radiation back on Cerus II. Maybe lupus. Until we have more symptoms, I think we're back to the oldest prescription of them all: take an aspirin and call us in the morning. We're half an hour by orbital shuttle from the Vulcan Academy Hospital - with all due respect to our own sickbay, this is probably the safest place in the Federation, should anything be wrong."

For all that they were officially on holiday, they all looked at Kirk. The human seemed to weigh their options and then nodded in agreement.

"There is a terraced garden on the northern slope," Spock said quietly, then. "It has a great deal of flowering edible bushes, surrounding an amphitheater with reclining chairs for star meditations."

"That sounds great, Spock," Jim said, and Uhura did her best to give him an appreciative smile - the headache that Sulu had been talking about yesterday was setting in, and she hissed in appreciation when Chapel emptied a painkiller hypospray in her arm. Chapel was about to apply another to herself, when she almost jumped out of her skin at a raised, harsh voice.

"What are you doing here?" A gangly Vulcan demanded. He had just exited from the cliff, and was carrying a small computer and and several incense burners hung on fine silvery chains. He was dressed in sandwalker robes, but ones that more resembled the finery of the dead behind them. Vulcan calligraphy was written on the dark brown flowing fabric - the lines intertwined in a complicated way, and Uhura couldn't tell if she was looking at avant garde design or the writings of a madman who had run out of wall space. The Vulcan - the archaeologist Ranek, she surmised - was radiating disapproval.

"You must leave at once!" He commanded, eyes flashing with a most un-Vulcan-like fire. "You are disturbing the site."

 **ooo000ooo**

 **Author's note: thanks for reading! I will be out travelling for ten days or so, so unless I have very sudden inspiration, the next update will probably come next week. Comments keep me motivated and purring :).**


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's note: Several observant readers (thank you so much!) noticed something missing in chapter 3 - namely Chapel's reaction to the invitation to take part in the rite of remembrance. It has now been added there, the crucial part being:**

 ** _"'Forgive me, All, as I take life to preserve life'. I see how that would be hard to square with Surak's ideal that it is better to die yourself than take a life," Uhura mused. "I get how it might be difficult to get modern Vulcans to participate in such a ritual." She squared her shoulders. "If you'll have me, I would very much like to participate, and I have no problems saying such a prayer."_**

 ** _Uhura glanced over at Chapel who looked up at Spock and then inclined her head. It was an understated gesture, calm and almost regal._**

 **Now on to chapter 5… In which Chapel and Spock fail to talk, and rest time in the Hanging Gardens leads to even more questions about what really happened in Shih Hanya all those millennia ago…**

ooo000ooo

"Dr. Ranek, I presume," Kirk said and inclined his head. "It would seem very difficult to disturb the site, as no one can enter. Or are we interfering with an ongoing experiment?" He looked around for sensors or cameras trained at the force dome.

Ranek hesitated. "No," he said with brusque finality. "But this is not an amusement park for bored aliens with no understanding of our heritage. You will restrict your presence to the inside of the cliff," he commanded.

Spock raised an eyebrow, and took a single step that placed himself between his captain and the disapproving archaeologist.

"Either this is a public heritage site, Dr. Ranek, in which case I fail to see which laws or ordinances we are breaking. Or this is a shrine of remembrance and therefore a matter primarily for the House of Surak, in which case you have no standing to comment on how my house chooses to fulfill its duties." There was no aggression in Spock's voice, only quiet power, but the power was almost a tangible living thing, McCoy thought. He moved to Spock's side almost unconsciously - not at all because he was preparing for a fight, but because that is the natural place to be. Jim was already there.

Ranek's gaze wavered and he hunched his shoulders, pushing hands further inside the wide sleeves of his robes. The signs of emotional upheaval were small, but in contrast to Spock's stillness and control they stood out.

"You, yes, son of Sarek," He finally allowed. "But not the off worlders."

"These are decorated members of Starfleet, Doctor Ranek, free to travel the Federation worlds as they please. And they are also my friends."

It was the second time McCoy could remember Spock saying the word like this, with such emphasis. No, the third. The first time he wasn't sure the Vulcan even remembered, but it had been in front of the matriarch T'Pau, many months before, when he insisted on McCoy and Kirk right to be present during his aborted wedding. _Katen_ , he remembered from the day before. _That's what this is_. _Spock is… claiming us. Insisting that other Vulcans acknowledge that he has friends._

Ranek turned and exited the way he came, incense burners swinging around his lower legs. Spock raised an eyebrow at the abrupt departure.

"That's one unhappy Vulcan," Kirk mused. "I wonder what he was planning to do up here. Spock… I apologize if the flying harnesses were inappropriate."

"Not at all, Jim. Especially during academic terms there are usually any number of people here, some of them studying the site from the air. Now most have travelled back to their clan holdings, upholding whichever rites of remembrance is appropriate for their House histories."

"Well, let's get out of this blasted sun." The doctor grumbled and made shooing motions towards the cliff. "The temperature must have risen ten degrees in the last ten minutes!"

With some last glances at the force dome, Uhura and McCoy entered the rock again. Kirk followed them, after trading a look with Spock. The Vulcan nodded once and then lingered with Chapel. The nurse was back to scanning the site.

"Ms. Chapel," He began, but then amended as she turned to him: "Christine."

"Spock," she said, a slight hesitation i her tone, "I really am fine." She sighed. "But it was a strange experience. I take it that I shouted at you to come down?"

"Yes. You repeated it twice."

"This is so strange. How did I say it, would you say?"

"I would say that your tone could have been characterized as giving an order. While my knowledge of Human emotional states is incomplete, I would say that you projected anger and concern."

Chapel rubbed her temple. The headache really shouldn't be coming back, not with the hypo she'd administered. "I have no idea what happened. From the descriptions it could be PTSD, except I feel… fine."

"There was an additional incident. As I landed, you walked toward me with some determination. You reached for me. And you said, to quote, 'You are mine.'"

Chapel colored. It started slowly but built up. She lowered the scanner and squeezed her eyes shut. "Oh."

She felt Spock move up to stand at her shoulder.

"I don't remember that either," She managed, trying to keep her voice even. "Maybe this is more serious than I thought. I'm sorry if I embarrassed you."

Spock had been mimicking her stance, but now he turned towards her, an eyebrow raised. "You did not. And," a minute hesitation, "It need not necessarily be untrue." He cleared his throat, "...in the future. Christine, I would talk with you…"

"Yes," she interrupted him, desperately. "Talk, yes. But not… not now. Later. Yes?"

"As you wish, of course."

"Right. Good. I have to go now," she finished, cursing herself for the inaneness of that comment. She managed a smile and turned towards the rock face. She'd almost made it to its safety when his voice made her pause.

"If you wish, I could play my lyre for yo, while you are recuperating in the garden."

 _More than anything in the world_ , she thought. But the familiar turmoil in her chest was now coupled with the return of what was promising to be a migraine. Flashes of light pounded her skull, and for a moment flashes of half-remembered, alien speech bombarded her skull. Definitely a migraine. Maybe just freaking out about what was to come.

"I wouldn't want to inconvenience you," she blurted out, and fled.

ooo000ooo

"Why," Sulu asked pointedly, "Am I cooped up here when you are the ones with symptoms?"

"You were the first one," Uhura reminded him, "You said last night that you'd had a blackout on your way to the baths."

"For a second or two, at most. And Dr. Ranek said that was because of pockets of carbon mononoxide. He was there in the corridor with me, and if he'd heard me talking or acting out all delirious, I'm sure he would have said. Vulcans don't lie, Nyota," Sulu finished.

"Mm," Nyota responded.

"You and Chapel, you were outside - so I don't imagine there were strange gas pockets there." Sulu continued. "And you say you must have lost several minutes - that's another major difference. And Chapel was saying things she didn't even remember afterwards. That is suspicious, I agree. My thing really wasn't."

"Why are you whining, Hikaru?" Uhura waved at the terraced garden around them, "Lots of alien flowers for your botany obsession. Padded reclining platforms. Plomeek ice cream. Or, well, as close to ice cream as Vulcans will ever come, bless their dairy-free souls. Oh, and did I mention scintillating and pretty co-invalids."

The flirting and teasing was half-hearted, part of their normal routine. But it usually evoked a stronger response than a bland shrug from the Japanese man. Now he just closed his eyes and sighed.

At any other time, the garden would have kept Sulu busy for hours. Sulu's grandfather was a Neo-shinto priest in a shrine outside Beppu and he'd learnt to walk on the winding gravel paths. When the VSS V'teren had landed in war-torn Tokyo a few weeks after First Contact, the Vulcans and Japanese had almost immediately bonded over Vulcans had promptly promised food and shelter and medical care for everyone, always. Once the people of Earth had started to actually believe in that promise, the major focus had become repairing the ravaged souls of the people who had very nearly seen their entire world die. While the Europeans and Americans were shouting for steel and duranium and what-do-you-mean-warp-TWO?, the Japanese parliament, or what remained of it after WWIII petered out, had immediately made climate restoration a priority. And not just the decimated forests and oceans but also the gardens of Kyoto and Tokyo, of Nagoya and Osaka. A quite logical decision, the Vulcans had said.

The garden of Shih Hanya lay on the southern side of the mountain, where the incline was the least steep. Natural terraces had been enlarged over the centuries, and now a serpentine walking path led up through the greenery. Many dozens of reclining chairs were spread out over the terraces, usually in groups of two or three. Plomeek bushes separated the chair groups from each other, granting privacy while at the same time not obscuring the view of the sky above.

Today, the sky was slightly purple from one horizon to the other - not a cloud to be seen. The sun bore down with its usual intensity, but Uhura and Sulu had quickly figured out how to rig a temporary sun roof over their chairs. Clearly, sunbathing was illogical - the platforms had originally been put into place for night-time meditation under the starry sky.

"Why won't you say the prayer with us tonight in the rite of remembrance, Hikaru?" Uhura asked.

When she got no answer, she tried again. "It'd be good for you. Your head already knows that you only did what you had to do, back when the Enterprise was boarded. You took a life. But in doing so, you saved so many. Now you have to convince your heart of that as well. You're not alone in this. It's not even the first time you've had to kill up front and personal. You know what the psych eval manuals say, this guilt that you're feeling is good, it shows that you're dealing with…"

"I don't feel any guilt."

"Of course you do, Hikaru…"

"I don't feel any guilt." Sulu bit off and then leaned back and brought a hand up to massage his temple. "That Klingon needed to be killed, and I killed him. I would do it again."

"Because that is your duty…"

"I think I liked it, Nyota." This time his interruption was almost a whisper. "What do the psych eval manuals say about that?"

Nyota bit her lip. "Alright. What do you mean by 'you think you liked it'. You did like it, but you're scared to admit it? Or you're not sure?" The questions were brutal and direct, but they weren't ensigns anymore. They were lieutenants in a wonderful but terrifying galaxy where washing out of active service due to bad psych evals were dangerously common.

"I… think I must have like it. Maybe I repressed the feeling then, and am only now remembering it. I have this vivid memory of green blood running through my fingers…"

"Green? Hikaru, Klingons bleed red."

Sulu blinked once, "I mean, red, of course. It's this headache, it keeps coming back... "

"Hikaru, look at me," Uhura demanded, voice soft but determined. "Sulu, you strangled that Klingon. Was there even any blood?"

She looked at him as he processed this. Finally he shook his head and then threw himself back on the padded platform. "Well," he said bitterly, "So how fucked does that make me, huh? At some point, Medical has to do a psych eval, I'm pretty sure it was only thanks to Dr. McCoy that it was postponed until after this shore leave."

Uhura thought about giving him a sharp retort, trying to shock him out of his pity party. Or maybe she should go gentle, try to get him to unlock those feelings of remorse that she was sure were in there somewhere. In the end, there was no perfect solution, and she ended up leaning back herself, eye lost faraway.

"You can't say the prayer, because you don't want forgiveness for what you did," She concluded, after a while. "And you think you won't want it in the future either, when we go back out there."

Sulu said nothing.

ooo000ooo

Christine had said she wanted to get some sleep, and had elected to go to a solitary reclining chair some thirty meters, or three terraces, down. But when she eventually wandered up to join her fellow officers, Uhura didn't think she looked like she'd slept at all. Instead, her eyes were glued to her pad which was joined with a short cable to a tricorder.

"Did you actually get anything when you scanned the Great Hall earlier today?" Uhura asked the nurse.

Chapel made a face and sat down on the edge of Uhura's platform. "Most of it is garbled beyond recognition. It's like looking into a starfield at warp - you know there are stars there, but trying to look at them gives you a headache."

She hesitated. "But there's something… Could the two of you have a look at A39-51?"

Sulu, who'd been staring out over the valley below them, seemed to welcome the distraction, and Uhura had a passion for finding patterns in data streams. Soon they were interlinking with the tricorder as well, going through the raw data files.

Sulu shook his head. "That time stamp that you mentioned, Chris, seems to be a reading on the atmosphere within the dome, wouldn't you say, Nyota?"

The communications officer hummed in affirmation and Sulu continued:

"It's fuzzy, but almost the same reading reappears a few seconds before and after. Now, whether the values it detects are real, I don't know. The theta energy in there is ridiculously low."

"That'd be expected though, wouldn't it," Uhura said, turning to Chapel. "No air, dampening fields suppressing anaerobic reactions… You'd get low theta energy."

"No," Chapel said, an interested gleam in her eyes. "You'd get no theta energy. Zero. But several times, for some nano seconds when the tricorder was able to get a reading, the tricorder seems to pick up some of it anyway. A few ppms only, sure, but still!"

Sulu was nodding now, "Right. Well, you're the biochemist here. I just fly things and Nyota likes her data streams nice and digital - so you'll have to help us out, Christine. Assuming this isn't just a fluke reading, what could cause theta radiation inside the dome?"

Chapel shrugged. "The forcefield going off and then on again for instance, letting a bit of our atmosphere in. That'd be the easiest explanation. But I'm sure there are a thousand other ones. I'm a biochemist, not a biophysicist. And I have zero Academy credits in Ancient Vulcan Biohazard Tech."

They mused over the readings for a while longer, before the situation demanded more iced and sweetened plomeek shavings.

ooo000ooo

 **Author's note: Thanks for the reviews, they make me so happy :). Next chapter Jim and Spock are going to be discussing soul stones, why Spock's family is now spiritually responsible for the Shih Hanya shrine, Vulcan marriages in general and in the very specific… And then it is time for the first Rite of Remembrance.**


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

 **...in which Jim and Spock discuss Vulcan marriages and we learn more about Enieth and her t'hyla Yen...**

 **ooo000ooo**

The tentative plucking of lyre strings led Jim to his First Officer. He ducked below plomeek branches, stopping to take a breath of a large purple flower. It closed with a snap just in front of his nose and he jumped backwards but then snorted at his own reaction. Bones was right. He needed to chill.

"I think I'm a little too big for you," he told the flower. "You'll have to find better prey."

"Jim," Came the voice from the other side of the bush. "Please do not antagonize the flowers."

"I didn't start it," Jim said, and pushed through the last of the foliage. "Your flowers are very uppity."

Spock gave this the raised eyebrow it deserved, and then noted the two glasses in Jim's hand. "What is that, may I ask?"

"Georgian sweet ice tea, according to our local expert. He browbeat the synthesizer to spit it out - had to override I don't know how many warnings about excessive sugar. Here, I watered yours down."

Spock took the offered glass. He had adjusted the back of the reclining platform in an almost upright position and was sitting cross-legged on the bottom half with a Vulcan lyre in his lap. With his dark brown desert robe, he looked like a figure out of legend, Jim thought. A Vulcan warrior stopping by the Keep for a day of rest and relaxation on his way out to a hunt, maybe. Or to the front.

Jim's Spock would never hunt for meat, of course. But he had made the decision to go out to the frontier…

"I've been reading more about Shih Hanya's history," Jim said, taking a seat on the adjoining platform and busying himself with getting the back in just the right position. "Vulcans dislike simplifying summaries, as I so well know, so the reading is a bit dense. But my overall impression is that the oasis below was a nexus for trade in this region for many centuries before the bomb. This Keep protected the caravan routes below."

"Indeed. The city states involved with the Green War of that period advanced quickly from horses to motorized vehicles to aeroplanes, then to flitters and orbital lasers. It took less than three hundred years."

"It's the same on Earth - the Greek city states, for instance, or the Chinese Warring States period, or the two first world wars. Intense fighting breeds technological and cultural advancement like nothing else."

"Until it suddenly does not. As shown by the Third World War on Earth."

"Yes. Until it suddenly does not..."

The two of them had seen too many dead worlds. For every planet that managed to achieve spaceflight, there were many that never seemed to be able to find planetary unity. Instead they remained locked into a cycles of violence with more and more powerful weapons until fission, fusion, bio-radioactivity and antimatter came into play and it all ended for everyone. Both Earth and Vulcan had nearly met that fate.

"I keep running into references to a particularly lucrative luxury good traded out of Shih Hanya - soul stones," Jim said, shifting their focus to something less grim. "But most of the texts about those are restricted for non-citizens. How much would you be comfortable telling me about them?"

Spock considered this. He appreciated the fact that Jim was so clearly trying to adapt to what must seem to be a strangely secretive alien culture. Humans had few taboos and spoke readily about almost anything to anyone, and many of them saw any reluctance to do the same as a sign of dishonesty.

"Soul stones are telepathically resonating minerals, capable of retaining telepathic images and feelings." He finally answered. "In this they are similar to Terran amethysts and Andorian gefen stones. The soul stones were rare in the time before Surak, and are rarer still today. You can find them embedded in many pre-Reformation statues where they let the audience experience a particular memory or state of mind as part of the artistic experience. They are rarely used in modern Vulcan art, where an emotional transference is considered... vulgar."

Spock considered for a moment, his fingers running over the lyre strings once, slowly. "Soul stones are also used in death rites, today as well as in ancient times. They can harbor the memory of the deceased, allowing the soul to live on. One of the major undertakings of Surak's disciples was the creation of the great Katric Arc, where the individual soul stones from the shrines and temples of the many thousands of different Vulcan clans were gathered in one single place. It serves as a meditation focus for all modern Surakian Vulcans and is a source of great harmony for us - even for me when I am many thousands of light years away."

"But they didn't find all the stones, did they?" Jim asked.

"They did not. A few clans choose, even today, to keep small separate shrines. And many warlords during the Green War, including the last lord of this place, used to steal the soul stones of subjugated enemies, hiding the stones away to ensure their compliance. We know that many soul stones from those violent years are kept somewhere inside this mountain, most likely in the great hall itself."

"So once the dome comes down, those soul stones can be excavated, and the souls they carry integrated into the Katric Arc?" Jim asked. "I can see how that would be important."

Spock's fingers started bringing forth a slow melody from the lyre. "It is possible that the original memories and souls stored in the stolen soul stones are no longer accessible. I would theorize that the psychic shock wave brought about by mass death can imprint over older katric imprints."

The Vulcan swallowed and Jim knew, in that way he had started to innately know things about Spock, that the other man was working on mastering the emotionally charged memory of the mass death that he himself had experienced. It had taken only a few seconds for the Vulcan crew of the Intrepid to die as their ship had broken apart far away from their native sands. Their telepathic death cries had washed over Spock like a tsunami.

Jim leaned back and let an undemanding silence stretch out between them. The garden was beautiful and tranquil - a shock of life standing proud in defiance to the barren stone around them. Or was that a too human trail of thought for this place? Life and death had always existed side by side here, maybe the contrast was a natural one, not to be feared.

"How come your House ended up with the responsibility to care for this place?" Kirk asked finally once Spock had started strumming on the lyre again.

"The bio-radiation poisoned ruins of Shih Hanya had no leader after the bomb went off," Spock said, glancing at the glittering force dome at the top of the cliff above them. "The clan was dissolved and the commoners of the Oasis below seem to have been more than content to become part of the global proto-democracy that Surak created. Yet Vulcan tradition of that era required nobles for some spiritual duties - not least the guarding of the dead, a most relevant task given the situation on this cliff. They did not wish to risk create and raise up another warlord, and so begged Surak to take that responsibility on himself. He acquiesced."

"But the Lord Hanya had an heir," Jim insisted, eyes focused far in the distance. "Enieth. A daughter. But she... " He hesitated, voice soft.

Spock raised a surprised eyebrow, "Indeed. Your research has been most thorough. I have seen very few references to this Enieth myself."

"Yes... Enieth… She was married to a man… Vata. A good match, but no children in the first decade… and he was jealous, a petty man who couldn't appreciate what he had..." Jim's voice trailed off and he visibly started when Spock reached out and touched him on the arm. He smiled though his eyes were a little uncertain.

"Where were we?"

"We were discussing the heir to Shih Hanya, Enieth. She presumably died during the explosion as well."

"I don't think she did" Jim said, voice insistent. He brought a hand up to his temple, a typical gesture for when he got one of his frequent headaches, Spock knew. "Her body was never found, right?"

Spock pursed his lips slightly. His own research into the fragmentary documents from this time period had been focused on general political events and that had been difficult enough to piece together. He was astonished at the amount of personal information that his captain had apparently unearthed. Where had he found this data?

"I have read nothing about her faith. I would have assumed that she perished here. A great deal of bodies were summarily taken away and disposed of in the first few centuries after the blast, when the bio-radioactive danger lessened and several of the outer automatic containments bubbles went down. Once the soul is gone, Vulcans care little about the fate of the body and no clear records would have been kept."

Jim leaned back, massaging his temple. It was as if his mind returned again and again with dogged insistency to a particular topic. "It can't have been a happy marriage, Enieth and Vata, I don't think. I mean no offense, but I don't think I understand the logic behind arranged marriages."

Spock tensed. "Many human cultures practiced arranged marriages for millennia, Jim. In general they were more stable than so called love matches, if I recall correctly. You put too much stock into love and infatuation."

"Do I? Well, what else should you base a marriage on. Mutual goals and respect? It seems too little to me."

"It is hardly little, Jim. Mutual goals, mutual respect, a high mental and…" Spock cleared his throat. Humans had no difficulty discussing these things. He would adapt. "...mental and sexual compatibility."

"Like you and Chapel?" the captain said softly. "You've shared your minds when we tried to help Sargon and his people at Arret... Compatible… you think that is enough? To make you happy?"

The human suddenly launched upright and bearing and voice was suddenly altered. "I just want you to be happy, Enieth." Kirk-Yen hissed. "He tries to tie you down, restrict you."

The Vulcan beside him groaned, hands going to his head before they dropped away and all signs of distressed vanished in an instance.

"Really?" Spock-Enieth said sardonically. "The world is destroying itself around us, and that's what you want to talk about? My grumbling husband?"

"I don't like the way he talks to you. If I thought that Taren would act like that, I'd challenge him myself during the kon-ut kali-fee..." The younger warrior sighed and dropped back into the meditation platform with a crash. They felt for their ahn woh, and was momentarily distressed when they couldn't find it… but then their mind was inexorably dragged away from the missing weapon, like a train on a railway track… This conversation could only go one way, had only ever and always gone one way...

"Not that I'll ever have time to marry Taren what with this incessant fighting." Kirk-Yen continued plaintively.

Spock-Enieth rolled their eyes. "Focus, my dear friend. Whine later. We must plan what we should say to my father. With both of us here, there must be a way to get him to change his mind. We must have peace beween Shih Hanya and Shih Yari, or this war will destroy everyone."

Kirk-Yen shook their head. They were as impulsive as they were daring, and often Spock-Enieth felt like the more mature and steady. But then there was this streak of naivite in the scientist…

"T'hyla," Kirk-Yen said, "I say this with all possible love, but you have had your head turned by the radical pacifism of that preacher, Surak of the Forge. Peace is not inevitable just because you wish for it."

"Then I will work for it, not wish." Spock-Enieth licked their lips. "T'hyla, I have to tell you something. There is a weapon hidden in this fortress, that no one knows about. A missile strong enough to take out all of Shih Yari in a single blast once it is launched. Kill everyone and make the entire region of your people uninhabitable for thousands of years."

Kirk-Yen grew still. "Where?" They finally asked.

Spock-Enieth shook their head. "I don't know! But I must try to find out. And I must convince my father that it must not be launched. We must, you and I. Yen, I need you." They reached out a hand, fingers parted in two.

"Whatever you need, T'hyla," Kirk-Yen, said immediately, "I'll always be there." They reached out to match the gesture, and the two hands met.

Jim gasped, almost falling forward. "God, Spock, something…"

"...Yes. Jim, please, may I touch your mind?"

"What? Yes." Jim blinked oriented, a hand on Spock's shoulder for support. He felt Spock's fingers on his face, heard the quick murmur and then the confusion and pain and strange voices faded away.

He came to a few minutes later as Spock eased him backwards onto the platform and stepped back.

"It happened to us too, didn't it?" Jim wheezed and then reached out and gulped down what was left of Spock's ice tea. His throat itched. Everything itched.

"Yes," Spock responded. "A most curious incident. I assume that you too remember nothing."

Jim nodded. "Mind control?" he asked. "It wouldn't be the first time."

But Spock shook his head. "I do not believe so. I had no sense of an outside… agency… wishing to manipulate us. I tried to capture the memetic matrix in your mind before it disappeared, but I could only get a trace of it…"

Jim took a deep breath. "Alright. Bones can talk about paranoia all he want, but enough is enough. We need to find this Ranek."

"Agreed."

Spock fell into step with his captain as they stepped back towards the mountain.

ooo000ooo

 **Author's note: Now we're finally getting some answers, and not just more questions. Please let me know if there is something that confuses you at this stage, that'd help me a lot! (And, of course, I am always happy for any other feedback! 3 ).**


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